Matt Charlton

March 10th 2010 seemed to come around awfully quickly.  I remember back in when Sue bought the tickets (or rather I bought the tickets, Sue decided that they were going to be my Christmas present) that the date seemed an awful way away.  The idea of seeing a full orchestra live, playing iconic music that I’d grown up with excited me.

I was looking forward to this until I’d seen a few comments on the web and read a review which prepared me for the worst.  I know this instilled me with some preconceptions but I’m glad I had them – I wanted to go in there expecting a poor show and being suprised.  Knowing there were going to be one or two issues with things lessened the impact whilst I was there.

We got pretty decent seats – I say decent seats when I mean the seats were terrible and my back really suffered.  They were positioned very well though; We were in the front block closest to the stage, 4th row back in seats 13 and 14.  Not a bad view really, especially since the two people sitting in the 3rdr row directly in front of us didn’t turn up.  Got a nice view of the stage, the orchestra and Anthony Daniels.

The orchestra were absolutely fantastic, they brought the John Williams masterpieces to life with such enthusiasm and gusto, it was hard at times to ignore the goosebumps and hairs on the back of your neck standing up.  There were two large cranes which were set up to provide video of the orchestra and conductor as they played.  Despite these sometimes getting in the way of the view of the stage,  it was fascinating to watch the conductor and to watch the video footage of them playing.  The rest of the time, the giant HD screen displayed montages of footage from all six Star Wars films.

The lights dimmed, the THX sound came through the speakers and then the orchestra started to play the 20th Century Fox fanfare.  It took me back to 1999 when the lights dimmed in the cinema for my first viewing of Episode 1.  The hairs on the back of my neck were on end, I had goosebumps the biggest smile on my face ever.  The orchestra burst into life with the familar Star Wars theme.

After the theme, something broke, there was a pause and an announcement went out that we were taking a break for a brief technical reset.  It interrupted the flow of the show but everyone maintained their composure.  Anthony Daniels wasn’t on stage by this point but he arrived pointing out the disturbance in the force (ho,ho).

Unfortunately the Star Wars montages caused me a lot of problems.  The way they were trying to use the footage and music was as a narrative overview for the movies in order I through VI.  Which is fine – until you have footage from the Phantom Menace with Anakin Skywalker a 9 year old boy interlaced with footage from Obi-Wan Kenobi’s Jedi Starfighter arriving at Genosis 10 years out of time sync.  Just because Geonosis is a similar colour to Tatooine it doesn’t give artistic license to mix the two segments up.

This happened all the way through with footage from the prequels being mixed in with the Original Trilogy.  The problem for me was that you had these iconic John Williams pieces from my childhood that were soiled with images of Jar Jar Binks and other prequel failures.  I don’t mean that – I’m not a prequel hater, I like the movies and I can watch them.  I see them as two seperate sets of films from two different times with a story arc that stretches across all IV movies.  I can forgive most of Lucas’ meddling with the OT (Except Han not shooting first) but for someone to put together footage from movies to show alongside an orchestra playing it was in parts really rubbish.  The only parts that worked were the character montages – Leia’s video footage in particular worked okay, despite jumping from ANH to ROTJ and back to Empire.

I’m being overly critical but I feel at £65 + £6.50 booking fee I have the right to.

One part that was pretty cool and was then dipped into a swamp on Degobah was the part where Obi-Wan hands Luke his father’s lightsaber.  We see a flashback to Anakin fighting in the Geonosian area, with a green lightsaber.  The spare lightsaber he’d been thrown by another Jedi since his own lightsaber at the time was broken in the droid factory.  That was sloppy.  There were plenty of occasions in ROTS where he uses the blue saber that they could have used.  Speaking of which I realised that the lightsaber Obi-Wan does give to Luke is the same one that was used to cut down the Younglings.  Creepy.

They messed around with lines too – when Vader and Luke are facing off in the throne room, Luke on the platform, they injected “It’s too late for me, Son” which is from the shuttle station on Endor shortly before their return to the Death Star.  More meddling.

At times I closed my eyes and just listened, other times I watched the orchestra and ignored the giant screen.  I’d go and see them again because it was fantastic and I take my hat off to the orchestra for doing a sterling job, the art direction/whoever was responsible for the footage needs to go back to the drawing board.  There’s nothing quite like hearing those pieces of music live.

Anthony Daniels was good with narration, he got a big round of applause for a couple of C3P0 quotes – the biggest being for the odds of successfully navigating an asteroid field (I wanted to shout out “Never tell me the odds!’)

Merchandising – they were selling programmes for £20 and small light up lightsaber keyrings for £12.  They had a small stall selling t-shirts for £20 and hoodies for £45.  Unfortunately these all said “Star Wars in concert” rather than just Star Wars.  I know I can get better t-shirts when I visit the states so I held off.

If you get the chance, go and see this fantastic orchestra playing the Star Wars music live.  If you’re a die hard Star Wars fan who knows that interlacing parts of the Naboo Battle with footage (and music) from Endor then close your eyes and listen.  As if it wasn’t bad enough with Ewoks – they’ve added Gungans to the same montage!

I presume you’ve all seen these strange boxes adorning public places (most mainstream cinemas, some shopping centres) that allow you to purchase movies and other bits and pieces?

Basically they’re a vending machine containing DVDs and Blu-Rays (games coming soon apparently).  There’s a touch screen, a chip/pin unit and a slot where your order is dispensed.

Last night I used one for the first time, we’d just been to see Alice in Wonderland and we were waiting for the girls to come back from the ladies room.  I’ve looked at the machines before but the prices have always been slightly off vs online retailer prices.  I noticed that they were selling Michael Jackson’s This Is It for £14.99 – I knew this was retailing for more than that online, I double checked and Amazon were selling it for £15.93 so I bought it.

With Disney being in the news the last few weeks in regards to reducing the amount of exclusivity time that cinemas have over film releases (Alice in Wonderland is coming out on DVD/Blu-Ray in 3 months time) I think these vending machines will really start to come into their own.

There is still rather a lot of debate about whether or not Hi-Def media is going to become the format of the future or whether digital downloads will win out – we all know which medium Microsoft is putting their weight behind.  As much as I like the convenience of digital storage theres nothing quite like physically owning the media, being able to physically put it into a player, storing it in a box, knowing you own it.  Digital rights Management is still all over the place, legitimate purchasers of PC Games are caused more inconveience by the copy-protection systems than the people who download them illegally from the Internet.

The future as I see it will involve a vending machine such as the POP247 box, located just by the exit of the cinema.  You go to see a film on opening night, when you come out, you buy the Blu-Ray/DVD, you own it to watch at home at your convenience.

With a trip to the cinema these days for 4 people costing an absolute fortune (3D showing, VIP seats was £43) plus your drinks/snacks its just something you can’t do every week.  It’s also something you don’t repeat for any old movie – unless its very, very good.  Last film I saw multiple times was The Dark Knight.  I think I saw it three times in total, twice at the cinema, once at the IMAX.  One of my all time favorite films.

The cinemas are worried about losing revenue – surely they get some sort of comission from these vending machines anyway – if you locate them somewhere only customers who have seen the film can use them, it cuts down on any Joe Public being able to come in and buy the film unless they’ve seen it at the cinema.  It would cut down on piracy, in a lot of cases eliminating it completely.  You’ll never stop the piracy of people who simply refuse to pay for things, but other people who have already been to see a film at the cinema and simply can’t afford to take the kids to see the film again might download a film as a stop gap until the DVD/Blu-Ray comes out.

You wouldn’t even need to do it through the vending machine, the cinemas themselves could secure exclusive rights to sell the DVDs/Blu-Rays and add an optional premium onto the ticket price for purchase of the media to take home.

I’m all for seeing certain films at the cinema, the big screen, the sound system, 3D.  I do feel burned though if I go to see a movie that I feel is rubbish.  £9 each for a basic 3D movie ticket is a little insane.  I think its close to £7 for a normal non-3D showing of a film.  I remember going for less than £3, and it wasn’t all that long ago.

I feel like I’ve rambled a little bit and this is probably non-sensical.  To sum up – give us the ability to purchase films on Blu-Ray from cinemas on release day, after watching the movie at £10 a ticket I want the ability to watch this at home again as many times as I like.  It’s the future, and this is a prediction.  I think this will be in place by 2012.

I visited the Trafford Centre yesterday.  The main reason for doing so was to allow both my wife and I to visit the Apple store.  We both have AppleCare Insurance on our iPhones and they had both been affected by a problem with the plastic casing; a small crack starting at the docking port and making its way up the back of the handset.

We got these replaced with no problems whatsoever – fantastic customer service and we decided to have a wander around whilst we were there.

I bought Sue a Sony Reader for Christmas.  It’s a Mills & Boon special edition (pink) PRS-300.  I’d had my eye on one for a while – long before I’d bought one for Sue, e-ink was something that looked fantastic.  There was a Sony Style shop at the Trafford Centre so I decided to go and have a look at the other model they have on offer – the touch (PRS-600).  I’d read a number of conflicting reviews – a lot of the negativity was aimed at the screen.  Due to the surface required for a touch screen interface, the screen was more reflective than the matte finish of the PRS-300.  I confirmed this almost immediately when I was unable to read the text on screen from a number of angles due to the florescent lighting in the store.

Up to this week I had been waiting for the announcement of the Apple iPad – it was pointless buying an E-book Reader as well as a tablet, I’d end up with having too many devices to carry around.  After disappointment with the press conference and knowing that I wasn’t going to be picking up the iPad (at least not the 1st generation) I’d decided I wanted the PRS-300.

There were a number of options available to me at this point.  I knew that I could get the reader online from WH Smith for £139.  I knew that Sony were selling it online for £149.99 and I knew that the prices other retailers were selling it for varied from £150-£199.  I decided to see if I could regain my faith in the high street; I’d have a go at bartering like my dad used to do (when we used to bother going to physical shops and not just buying things online).  I remember one occasion he was buying a Camcorder.  Currys and Comet were both situated within a few hundred meters of each other so we went to-and-fro playing them off one another.  One shop would throw in a bag, the other a bag and some tapes, back to the first and they’d throw in a spare battery along with the bag and tapes.  It was great fun and you could end up with a real bargain. This was all before the Internet really took off.

I decided that since we were out, wanting to have a wander around anyway that I’d set myself a little challenge and try to get hold of a Sony Reader cheaper than I could online. I want to make it clear that I didn’t set out to waste the time of any of the stores involved, I wasn’t trying to defraud them or con them into selling me something cheaper than they should have been doing, I was trying to satisfy my own personal curiousity about whether or not high street shopping could still be competitive when compared against the Internet.

Here’s an account of how it went.

Sony Style

They had the PRS-300 at 149.99 – matching their online store price.  I thought this was more than reasonable considering a lot of places tend to treat the businesses as two completely separate entities.  Also they had the readers on display, both (PRS-300 and PRS-600) were turned on, had books available to read and were on the display stands that allow you to pull the unit away from the stand to feel it in your hands properly. I decided the price was pretty good but that I’d go and have a wander around the other shops to see what they were offering.

WH Smith

They didn’t have the readers on display but once we tracked down a member of staff they checked in the back and confirmed that they had one in stock at £149.99.  I asked them why they were selling it for more than it cost from their website and they attempted to explain it in terms of delivery costs – it costs them more for them to have stock delivered to the store.  (They sell it online for £139 including free delivery to either store or customer).

Waterstones

Had a nice display cabinet next to the tills – you couldn’t hold one but you could see them behind glass.  They had an offer on this weekend where they were giving away a free £10 e-book voucher for their online store with all e-book readers purchases.  Price of the PRS-300 was £179.99.  The store was busy and I struggled to get hold of anyone – we decided to leave and come back a little later.

Sony Style

Back in the Sony shop I decided to try something out.  I didn’t lie as such but I asked an assistant if there was any room for maneuverability on the price as I’d seen it elsewhere.  He told me that if I bought one today I could have it for £134.95 as they were having a sale.  I asked him which colours they had in stock.  He replied “none”.  They’d have to order one in.  Sneaky! They’d order it in and I’d have to pick it up from the store, they weren’t willing to ship to my home address.  I’d have had to go back to Manchester from Bradford, negating any saving we’d have made.

John Lewis

Managed to find the Sony Readers in the electrical department on display stands which you could lift them from to read.  Some helpful soul had decided to delete all of the books on them, you could look at the menu but not a lot else.  Price was £179.99.  It took us ages to grab an assistant, even though there were a number of them hovering around – they seemed more interested in talking to one another than helping with customer enquiries.  We found one and asked him if they were willing to price match the other stores.  He told me their policy allowed for two options – either we bought the Reader at £179.99 and their price match department would verify the lower cost, send us a letter which would allow us to go back into store for a refund, or we could do it in reverse – wait for a letter which would allow us to purchase the reader at the lower price.  Again both options meant a return trip back to Manchester.

Waterstones

I decided to go back to Waterstones and it was a little quieter, managed to grab someone and ask them if they’d be willing to price match.  They got a manager who said unfortunately not.  They then tried to sell me an Elonex E-book Reader (I didn’t even know Elonex were still in business) and told me it was only £130 and it was better than the Sony because it read more types of PDF.  I decided to let this go and we left.  Again.

Currys.Digital

We decided to see if Currys had any in the shop. They had the unit retailing at £179.99, we were going to leave but I noticed they had a sign up by the tills which mentioned their price promise.  If you find it elsewhere within 15 miles/however many days they refund the difference + up to 10%.  I grabbed someone (again they were all for gathering in groups and ignoring the customer) and asked them if they’d price match a cheaper store I’d been in that day.  He went to get a manager who came over, got a reader out of the cabinet, printed off a label and took me to the till.  “That’ll be £179.99 please sir.”  “Oh, I said.  I was wanting to have it price matched with another store”.  I told him that Sony were selling them for £134.95 – he asked me if they had any in stock (drat) and I told him that they had them ready to order in 1/2 days.  He looked at me smugly and said “We won’t be price matching them then”.  I replied with “WH Smith are selling it for £149.99″ He asked me if it was the same model and the same colour, I told him it was.  He asked me if I’d told the shop assistant this, I said I had, he looked unhappy, went to find him and told him to check out the price at the other store.

The guy who I originally grabbed must have been late for lunch because he palmed me off onto someone else who went onto the net to have a look at the WH Smith Price.  They had the slowest Internet connection I’ve ever seen and it took a long time to sort out.  She saw that it was £139 online, she eventually phoned the store, got through, managed to get a price and was told £150 (price had gone up a penny!).  She checked with another manager who said that they would match the in-store price but not the web price.  I would be able to get it for £149.99 (£150) – 10% of the difference; in this case £30 so £3 off and a retail price of £147.  I asked if that was the best she could do – I told her I could order one from WH Smith today and have it delivered to my house for free on Monday/Tuesday.  I realised that it was only £8 difference but £8 is £8.  She agreed that every penny counts at the moment and said the only thing she might be able to do was offer some discount on the monthly payment protection plan for three years.  I told her I wouldn’t have the reader in three years but was going to buy it on my credit card so it would be protected that way.  I didn’t bother going into home contents insurance and things too but it’d covered under that as well.  I told her that I was very grateful for her time and thanked her but I was going to leave it. I did feel a little bad about having wasted her time.  If they’d done me a price at less than £140 I would have bought it there and then.  They’d have made a sale of £140 and I might have given them another go in the future.

As it happens, I left the Trafford Centre without a Sony Reader.

I had a good look when I got home at the WH Smith website, using Quidco I can get the reader for around £134 – 50p cheaper than the Sony shop were offering me it for.  This is an extremely good price (Sue’s reader at Christmas cost me £160) but at the moment I can’t really afford to buy it.  I could but I’d have no money left to spend on myself for the rest of the month.  In a month where you have Bioshock 2 and AvP coming out you need to save the pennies up!

I’m in no immediate rush to get hold of a Reader, as long as I have one before I go on holiday later in the year I’ll be fine.

It’s not all bad news for the high street, the Skechers shop got £120 out of Sue (after I’d run some price checks online to make sure you couldn’t buy them cheaper) and I bought a couple of iPhone cases from the Apple store spending around £60 (including £20 for a new case for Sue’s new iPhone) so we did do our part yesterday to help the retail industry.

To sum up – I think my own consumer habits have changed.  I can’t speak for the rest of the world or the rest of my generation but 9/10 I cannot bring myself to buy something from a shop if I know that I can order it online cheaper.

I understand that high street stores have overheads that online stores might not; more staff – certainly more customer facing shop staff, more costs regarding electricity, taxes, etc.  I just thought that with the economy being the way it is at the moment (even though we’re now out of the recession) that high streets might try to be a little more competitive.

I also realise that without the Sony Style high street store I wouldn’t have been able to hold the PRS-600 in my hands and confirm that the screen was unusable in bright light (making it a non-viable purchase for holiday sunbed reading).  With this case there would have been enough scope for me to build an opinion based on reviews from the web but its no match to holding the thing in your hand.

The thing that bugs me the most is that the online counterparts of the high street shops (GAME being the most prominent example) are treated like a seperate entity.  To me, there is no reason why an Xbox 360 copy of Left4Dead2 might be £34.99 online at www.game.co.uk and £42.99 on the high street.  I can use my reward card to collect (and redeem) points on purchases both online and in store.  I can return an item I’m not happy with that I bought from the website to a GAME store.  It’s silly.  With the two arms of the business being as conjoined as they are in that respect – why not do it with prices across the board?  I know it would make it more likely for me to buy a game whilst I’m in town on my lunch break.  As it stands at the moment I’ll buy it from the cheapest online store.  Sometimes this is the GAME website, other times its Amazon or gameplay.

Whilst I don’t want the high street shops to disappear, I’m not going to spend any of my hard earned cash with them if I can save money, spend it online and get the product I want 1-2 days later.  I’ve never been in such a rush that I’ve had to have something there and then.  (we’re talking electricals here, reptiles and other non-electrical impulse buys are excluded from this statement)

Thanks for reading

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Happy New Year!

May 2010 bring you all that you desire and more – may your wishes and dreams come true.  If theres a goal or a target you’ve set yourself, get it sorted.

I have a couple of things I’m going to do this year.  I think a few of them warrant another post on my Weight Loss Blog, there are some however that belong here.

We’re rubbish with money, we get plenty of it coming in, it just seems to get flittered away.  We’ve put a plan of action into place that begins this month which will see us using our money much more wisely and will set us up in the long run to be much better off than we currently are.

I’m going to write some short stories this year, some creative writing if you will.  It’s something thats been on my list for a while, its time to get that sorted.

I’m going to throw out a load of junk I’ve been hoarding the last few years and give the house a general clean, its time to dump the rubbish.

I’m going to take stock of what I’ve got, spend more time with the people I love and have as much fun as I can.

One of the best texts I got last night was this one:

“2010 is at the door… Remember, life is short. Break the rules, forgive quickly, kiss slowly, love truly, laugh uncontrollably and never regret anything that made you smile”